"Are you pleased to submit yourself to the will of God?" asked the
Archbishop, when all hope was given up.
"With all my heart," the boy answered simply.
"I had written him a treatise on the ’Art of War by Sea,’" said Raleigh,
when the sad news reached him. "But God hath spared me the labour of
finishing it. I leave him therefore in the hands of God."
When the long funeral procession passed through the streets "there was a
great outcry among all people," and it was to the sounds of weeping and
wailing that the boy-prince, who had won so much love and respect, was
carried to Westminster Abbey. There, close to him, was laid more than
forty years later, his dearest sister, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, who,
after a sadly adventurous life, spent her last few years peacefully in
London, cared for and watched over by Lord Craven, whose devotion to her
had been lifelong, as unchanging as it was chivalrous.
Another brother and sister are buried here, Anne, the little daughter of
Charles I., and Prince Henry, his third son. Anne died before all those
troubles began, which saddened the childhood of her brothers and
sisters, and made them prisoners in the hands of their father’s enemies,
as she was only four when she fell into a fast consumption.
"I am not able," she said wearily, the night she died, "to say my long
prayer, but I will say my short one. ’Lighten mine eyes, O Lord, lest I
sleep in death.’"
Little Henry, the Duke of Gloucester, was extraordinarily like his uncle
Henry in every way, old for his age, clever, thoughtful, "with a sweet
method of talking, and a judgment much beyond his years." He was taken
from his father almost before he knew him, and was, with his sister,
also a Princess Elizabeth, kept practically a prisoner in London by the
Puritan party. But he was not unkindly treated, for so engaging was he
both in conversation and in manners, that many of the Puritans thought
he would make a good ruler for England if only he were strictly brought
up, and kept away from the influence of his mother or the court.
When the sentence of death was passed on King Charles, he asked to see
the two of his children who were in London, and after some delay the
request was granted. Awe-struck, the little couple came into his
presence, and the king seems to have grasped what was likely to happen.
He lifted the Duke of Gloucester on to his knee. "Sweetheart," he said,
"they will cut off thy father’s head, and mark, child, perhaps they will
make thee a king. But you must not be a king while your brothers
Charles and James be living."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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